


Men of Letters

by paperandsong



Series: Vraiment Existé [2]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Absinthe, Dark Comedy, Historical, Moulin Rouge References, Other, Translation issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:09:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29616174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperandsong/pseuds/paperandsong
Summary: Gaston Leroux invites Alexander Teixeira de Mattos to Paris for a night out. But there is someone else who would like to meet M. Teixeira and he has opinions about the quality of Teixeira's translation.
Series: Vraiment Existé [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2175900
Comments: 22
Kudos: 17





	Men of Letters

**June 15, 1912**  
**Paris, France**

At nine in the evening, M. Teixeira de Mattos received a handwritten note on creamy hotel stationery informing him that a M. Leroux was waiting for him at the front desk. He appreciated the quality of the paper, lightly fingering the embossed seal bearing the hotel’s name and crest. He placed the note on the table with care and let out a sigh. What could possibly have been so important that he had to meet the man in person? He looked in the mirror and smoothed the black hair down around his ears. He reluctantly made his way downstairs where he found the portly author talking boisterously with the wait staff.   
“Ah, there he is!” Leroux exclaimed loudly as he spied Teixeira on the stairs. He extended his hand eagerly.   
“I am so glad you are finally here!” He continued to hold Teixeira’s hand as he turned and loudly proclaimed to all nearby that, “This is the man who brings my work to the English-speaking world!”  
Teixeira laughed to cover his embarrassment.   
“Thank you, M. Leroux.”  
“No, no, you must call me Gaston. And may I call you - what - Alex, I presume?”  
“Actually, my friends call me Tex.”  
“TEX? How adorable! Well, Tex, is the room very nice? I asked them to give you the very nicest room.”  
“Oh, yes. It is quite comfortable. Thank you.”  
“And your journey from London? It all went smoothly?”  
“Very smoothly. Thank you.”  
“This is not your first time in Paris?”  
“No.”  
“But you have not been here in awhile? I think we would have crossed paths if you had been here, don’t you think so?”  
“So it would seem...” Teixeira gave a non-committal mumble. Already he found Leroux’s energy exhausting. He was not used to so much excitement. He was hoping the man would soon explain the reason for bringing him to Paris. But Leroux only hurried him out the door of the hotel and into the balmy summer night. He spoke breathlessly the entire walk until they arrived under the red shadow of a giant windmill.   
“Ah, here we are,” Leroux sighed with satisfaction. “Did you happen to come here on your last trip to Paris, my dear Tex?”  
“I did not.”  
Leroux gave a laugh and slapped Teixeira’s back. A little too hard. A little too intimate for a man he had only just met.   
“I thought you might appreciate the ambience. I thought it might remind you of your homeland.”  
“My homeland?”  
Gaston chuckled deeply and made a spinning motion in the air with a pudgy finger, mimicking the churning fans.   
“Because of the windmill?” Teixeira asked, lost, until the idea sprang in his mind, “Ah, because I am DUTCH? Oh yes, quite clever.”   
“Shall we go inside?” Leroux asked, stretching his arm out towards the nightclub doors. When Teixeira resisted, he hardened his resolve. “I wasn’t really asking. Let us go in. It is very fun, you shall see.”

A young woman in a long black skirt and a pink feather in her hair led them to a table in a far corner of the garden. Leroux seemed very much at home here. He waved to a few acquaintances, kissed the cheek of an elegant woman standing against the wall. He excitedly pointed out small details to his companion,  
“Over there in that corner there used to be an enormous elephant with a series of rooms in its body,” Leroux explained nostalgically. “Ten times as big as the elephant they would pull across the stage for LE ROI DE LAHORE. Oh, the trouble one could get into in the belly of that beast! They tore it down a few years ago, I don’t know why.”   
He ordered a bottle of absinthe brought to their table.  
“Really, Gaston. I much prefer wine,” Teixeira said, placing a cigarette in his ebony holder.  
“No, no.” Leroux waved his hand flippantly through the air. “This is what one drinks here.”  
“I haven’t had an absinthe in many years,” Teixeira said wistfully. “I would really rather not stir up those old memories.”  
But Leroux pretended not to hear. The young woman brought over a silver tray laden with the fountain and all the necessary tools. She placed a small crystal glass before each man and the two-tapped fountain of ice water between them. She began to lay out the flat spoons and sugar cubes but Leroux shooed her away.  
“I will do it, I will do it,” he said impatiently. “But leave that bottle.” He laid the spoons across the glasses and dropped a sugar cube on each. “She looked like she wanted to hover. And we have things to discuss.”  
“Yes, Gaston. I should very much like to know what it is you want to discuss.” Teixeira took a long drag on his cigarette. “Your publisher was most insistent that I come in person. He said it wasn’t anything that could be handled through letters.”  
“No, no. It isn’t,” Leroux said, squinting his eyes behind his spectacles as he focused his attention on the precise measurement of each emerald drop.   
“I assume you wanted to talk about my translation of your Balaoo?”  
“Balaoo?” Leroux huffed. “I will be very honest with you. I couldn't care less about Balaoo.”   
Teixeira found this quite insulting. He had spent the last month slogging through the insipid story, translating quickly in the hopes that he could win a contract with Leroux’s publisher.   
“Do you have a new project for me?” he asked hopefully.   
Leroux did not stray from the ritual before him. He fiddled with the tap so that it dripped the ice water just a droplet at a time through the white sugar cubette and into the crystalline liquid below.   
“Ah, just like that. Do you need help, Tex? Do you see what I’ve done here?”  
“Yes, yes. I know how to do it, Gaston. I have lived some.”  
Leroux sat transfixed by the change in clarity of the liquid before him. Teixeira noted the elegant leaf pattern of the spoons. When both drinks had achieved the desired opalescence, Leroux looked up to meet Teixeira’s eyes.  
“Perfect louche! We haven’t forgotten how. We haven’t forgotten the good old days, have we?”  
“No, no,” Teixeira agreed. “We have not forgotten.”   
Of course, Teixeira’s notion of what those good old days had been may have been quite different from his companion’s. He did not know Leroux at all. They had never so much as exchanged a personal letter. Teixeira had been startled at the demand that he come to Paris in person. It may seem that there are things far more unpleasant than a paid business trip to Paris, but Teixeira had not traveled abroad in many years. He enjoyed his life at home. And his last memory of Paris was a difficult one. He had not wanted to come. He did not want to be there.  
The performance began. It was vulgar and loud and the dancers’ skirts whipped at Teixeira’s cheek in a way that disturbed him. Leroux laughed at him from across the fountain.   
“What is the matter, Tex? You do not like the choreography?”  
“I am a married man, Gaston.”  
“As am I, Tex. But why should matrimony get in the way of a lovely evening?”  
“I should specify then, that I am a _happily_ married man.”  
“Oh. That’s a shame. Perhaps I should have taken you to the OPERA instead. Do you like OPERA?”  
“I do indeed.”  
“Oh, well. Perhaps tomorrow I can give you a tour of the Garnier? I have free reign there, you know.”  
“I was hoping to attend Mass.”  
“Yes, well, in the afternoon then.”  
They sat in uncomfortable silence. Teixeira’s unease with the spectacle infected Leroux’s pleasure and this sparked in him some resentment. But why did this man have to be so boring? He fixed them both another drink.   
“I have read that you knew Wilde,” Leroux said. “Did you know him well?”  
“I did. When we were both younger. We had the same circle of friends.”  
“And you married his brother’s widow?”  
“Yes, Lily.”  
“And so Oscar Wilde’s niece is now your step-daughter?”  
“Dorothy, yes.”  
“And does DOLLY share her uncle’s proclivities?”  
The question took the wind out of Teixeira’s lungs. But how dare this man? Could he really be so drunk already?  
“She is only seventeen, Gaston. If you please, I would really prefer not to discuss my family.”  
Leroux recognized in an instant that he may very well have ruined the entire evening and everything that was meant to come after. He tenderized his tone for an apology. Which Teixeira, a perfect gentleman, was obliged to accept. Leroux spent the rest of the night regaling Teixeira with tales of his wild days as a foreign correspondent; of shrouding himself as a Berber grandmother in Morocco; of covering the trials of manic anarchists at home.   
Teixeira kept very quiet. He had tales too, but he kept them close. He did not offer up his stories of the Wilde brothers like the good gossip they were. He had always enjoyed the devotion of his friends because he was himself a devoted friend. He shuddered at the memory of his last vision of Oscar; dying, impoverished, alone. He had no interest in going to the Palais Garnier with Gaston Leroux the following afternoon. He had plans to visit a certain gravesite at the Cimetière du Père Lachaise. 

But at some point, the absinthe did work its magic on Teixeira and he warmed up to his host. When the hour came to leave the gardens of the Moulin Rouge, they did so arm in arm and stumbling amiably into the bustle of late night Montmartre.   
“I have a small pied-à-terre close by. Come join me for one last drink, Tex.”  
“No, no. I’ve had enough. I still hope to attend MASS in the morning.”  
“It is already morning! Oh, do come. Let’s have some more fun. You can come have MASS with me at the Garnier in the afternoon.”  
“I have been to the Garnier before. Thank you. If we have discussed BALAOO to your satisfaction, then I think I shall pass a quiet Sunday in my -”  
“And if I say I am not finished discussing it? My publisher has brought you all this way to meet me. I demand a little more of your face than you have given me. So I ask again, most cordially, please come enjoy one last drink in my apartment. It is only one drink. Tex.”

They bumbled up the stairs - or was it down? Leroux took out his keys and fumbled with the handle a bit, fruitlessly stabbing at the lock before finding success. He swung the door open wide.   
“Please, come inside,” he said, spreading his arm with a broad gesture, directing Teixeira’s gaze across the yellow room. Teixeira heard the door shut behind him as he took in the cramped little space. It was not quite what he expected of the fabulous author. It was elegant, but in an outdated sort of way. There were three doors on three walls, a tall window with dark curtains pulled tight across the fourth. He sat down with his back to the entry as Leroux shuffled about preparing the drinks. Teixeira was startled when not two but three glasses were set on the low table before him. It was only then that his eyes met a pair of knees sitting across from him. He looked up and made a small gasp as he met a pair of black eyes.   
The man had not been sitting there before. But without anyone coming in or out of that little room, there now sat a very tall, very thin man in a dark black mask. Teixeira sat in stunned silence until at last the masked man spoke from behind the black veil that lay gently over his mouth,   
“So, you have brought me the polyglot. Well done, Gaston.”  
The voice was rich and velvety. It was horrifying.  
“Is this a joke, Gaston?” Teixeira asked uneasily.   
“It is no joke, Tex,” Leroux assured him, taking a long swig of wine. “He very much wanted to meet you. This has all been his doing.”  
“But why?” Teixeira asked with a wry smile.   
Leroux turned towards the masked figure and commanded him directly,  
“Come now, Erik. You must finally tell us what you want.”   
The man in black dropped a book on the table between them. Rough at the edges, papers sticking out from the pages, covered in red scribbles. Teixeira recognized the cover at once. He began to laugh.  
“I say, Gaston! This is quite an elaborate scheme you have set up. Have you hired an actor to interrogate me about my translation of your book?”  
Leroux looked gravely at Erik. With an annoyed huff, the man in black jerked the mask from his face. Gloriously hideous as he was, Teixeira leapt to his feet and let out a shriek of horror.   
“God save me!” he shouted in English. He instinctively genuflected and backed away from the scene. He turned and began to rattle the handles of each of the three doors. But he found that each was locked tight. Or rather, upon running his fingers along the edges, he found them to be faux-doors. Inseparable from the wall itself.  
“How do I - how do I - let me out, Gaston! This is madness!”  
The other two men remained seated. They waited patiently for the panic to pass.   
“Calm down, Tex. He won’t hurt you. He has promised me he won’t touch you.”  
Teixeira held his temples in disbelief as he steadied his breathing.   
“But he isn’t real! He is fiction!”  
“Ask him yourself. He is right here; we shouldn’t speak of him as if he cannot hear us. He can always hear us.”   
Teixeira passed a hand over his face and closed his eyes tightly, as if he could make the man disappear if he could no longer see him. But when he opened his eyes again and saw the man continued to sit there, ugly and smug, he conceded to reality. Slowly, he returned to the sofa and took his place next to Leroux.   
“What are you?” he whispered. “Are you really a ghost then?”  
“I am only a man. As you well know.”  
“My apologies. I had always believed you to be fiction.”  
“But it is right there in the introduction that he is real,” Leroux mumbled into his drink. “Flesh and bone and all.”  
“I am still fiction. I am any story you wish me to be. I am Hades, I am Faust, I am Don Juan. I am the portrait of Dorian Gray come to life. Do you think, M. Teixeira, that there is a portrait of a perfect Erik in an attic somewhere?” He stroked his own rotten face as he spoke. “A portrait of a man who is youthful and vivacious, with bright eyes and a perfect, noble nose?”   
“Per-perhaps,” Teixeira stammered. “After tonight, I believe that anything is possible in God’s dear world.”  
The man lifted the book between them.   
“I have brought you here because I have some thoughts about your translation.”  
“You have read my translation?”  
“I have.”  
“Oh, is that it?” Leroux said, leaning forward. “But it’s so thin compared to the original. English really is a more efficient language, isn’t it?”  
“Well,” Teixeira hummed nervously. “I made a few cuts.”  
“Ah, that’s just as well. I go on too long anyway. Concise is better. I have plans to send a copy of the English to Hollywood. I think they may be interested.”  
“What an inane idea,” the madman hissed. “To think anyone would want to see Erik on a big screen.”  
“Well, what do you have to say about my work?” Teixeira asked, suddenly quite interested in Erik’s opinion.  
“I object to your omissions.”  
Teixeira felt the blood drain from his face and a chill creep under his collar.   
“How - how so?” he stuttered.  
“Where shall I begin?” Erik picked up the annotated book and turned to Chapter IV: The Enchanted Violin. “Here you write just a single line about Christine’s performance at the request of the Duchess of Zurich. You write, ‘...she sang once at the Duchess of Zurich’s,’” here Erik read aloud in a thick and whiny English. Teixeira had really expected better pronunciation from a man of Erik’s talents. “And that is all you say. But this was one of her most brilliant performances! I remember reading in the papers at the time that she sang as if Mozart himself were sitting in the audience. And I know it to be true - I was there myself. Never has there been so radiant a Queen of the Night!”  
“You read in the papers…” Teixeira repeated in disbelief. “But those words were written by Gaston himself. Mlle. Daaé was never written about in papers because Mlle. Daaé was never real!”  
Erik cut the air with a long and angry finger.  
“Say that about my wife again and it will be very bad for your health, M. Teixiera. Explain yourself. Why would you cut short any description of her performance?”  
Teixeira began to sweat beneath his coat and tie. He pulled at his collar in an effort to get more air.   
“I can only say that I apologize, for any disrespect my translation may have shown towards Mlle. Daaé. I must admit I made several cuts to the original as I was on a tight schedule. I published three other titles that same year. I am not a wealthy man - I work fast to make ends meet. Forgive me.”  
“I forgive you, Tex,” Leroux said with drunken reassurance. “Why else would I publish so many novels? Money doesn’t make itself.”  
Erik would not be so forgiving.  
“Do you not belong to the Lutetian Society, M. Teixeira?”  
“I do.”  
“And isn’t part of the stated mission to produce ‘unmutilated renderings’ of Continental masterpieces?”  
“Yes, yes of course. But Le Fantôme de l'Opéra could hardly be considered a masterpiece. No offense, Gaston.”  
“None taken! It is certainly not my best work. They say La Chambre Jaune will be what I am remembered for.”  
“And hopefully, I will be remembered for my work with Fabre or Maeterlinck.”  
All this chatter sent Erik seething. He made two gnarly fists and slammed them down on the table.   
“I was not finished with my list of grievances against you Teixeira! You will listen to me and you will repent for the butchery you have made of my story!”  
Leroux and Teixeira shut their mouths and sat up a little straighter. Erik flipped through the book to Chapter XIII: Apollo’s Lyre,  
“And here you write that I pointed to the open coffin and told Christine, ‘That is where I sleep.’ And then you never mention the coffin again.”  
“Why would you complain about that?” Teixeira asked.  
“Because you fail to record one of my most romantic offers to Mlle. Daaé. My offer to enlarge my sleeping place so that she might rest there alongside me for all eternity!”  
Leroux and Teixeira both twisted their faces in disgusted disbelief. Teixeira turned to Leroux in the hopes that he, who seemed much better acquainted with Erik, might explain to him how this did not at all make him a more romantic figure. But Leroux only shook his head in pity.   
“My apologies again, M. Erik,” Teixeira groveled. “I intentionally omitted that line because I felt it would offend the English-speaking readership. You must understand that the English are not like the French. They are more easily scandalized.”  
“What could be scandalous about what I have said?”  
“Well, there is, in your great romantic gesture, just the slightest hint of impropriety. One must be quite careful when discussing the sleeping places of couples. It makes one think of what those couples might do, in those sleeping places. And the idea of a couple doing what couples do in a - in a coffin? This would be too much. It would be censored. So I censored it myself.”  
“I do not appreciate your censorship. You have diminished for the record the eternal love between Mlle. Daaé and myself. It is unforgivable.”  
Teixeira put up his hands in protest.  
“Please, M. Erik. I do believe I have done you a great favor. It is true, I have made a great many omissions to your story. But much of what I have taken out only serves to improve your reputation.”  
“What else did you take out, Tex? You really did cut up my story, didn’t you?” Leroux complained peevishly.  
“Erik does not need a foppish little English-Dutchman to improve his reputation!” Erik roared. “What else did you take out?” he demanded to know.  
“The SCISSORS!” Teixeira hissed out from between his arms, which he was holding up protectively around his head. “I took out all mention of Christine’s SCISSORS!”  
“What are you talking about?” Erik spat. His anger was tangible. He was now aggressively stinking and fuming. Teixeira trembled in fear. He had to find a way to escape this nightmare!  
“When Mlle. Daaé was telling her story beneath Apollo’s Lyre, she mentioned that she took a pair of scissors with her into the bathroom in the event...” Teixeira hesitated here. “In the event you were a dishonest man. Those were her words, not mine. You will not find them in the English translation. I believe this omission is in your favor.”  
Though Teixeira braced himself for yet more of Erik’s rage, he was startled to see a great sadness fall over the man. In an instant his face seemed to collapse further into itself.   
“I do not remember it this way,” he whispered, his voice deflated. “My poor Christine. Why would I have ever allowed her access to a pair of scissors?”  
All three sat in dismal silence. Teixeira’s eyes darted around the room, desperately searching for a way out. He felt his only option now was the window, located directly behind the sulking Erik.   
“I feel the need for another drink,” Teixeira said suddenly. He stood up and moved towards the table in the corner where the wine sat in a bucket of ice. He feigned interest in the bottle, but dropped all pretense to rush at the window with the intention of crashing through it. He pulled back the dark curtains and to his dismay found that the window, too, was false. He turned to face Leroux and Erik and gave a crazed smile. The Green Fairy had turned herself into a RIGHT HAG; the green veil pulled from his eyes. The room now felt very familiar; the yellow bourgeois decor, the tacky furniture, the ostrich egg. This was no pied-à-terre. This was Erik’s lair. Erik’s domain and his alone.   
“Please sit down, M. Teixeira,” Erik called to him. “I am not done yet.”  
“What else could there possibly be?” Teixeira cried, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I have confessed to everything! Yes, I made omissions. Yes, I cut up your masterpiece, Gaston. Forgive me! Forgive me and let me go!”  
“Your highest crime,” Erik pronounced, “was omitting my wedding night.”  
“Your what?” Teixeira shrieked in terror.  
“The night of the MASKED BALL was also the night of my wedding to Mlle. Daaé. And there is no mention of it anywhere in these wretched pages! I came to her dressing room singing the Nuit d'hyménée - what did you think was going to happen?”  
Teixeira threw back his head in mad laughter. He laughed to fill the time. He laughed as he scanned the room once more. If all the doors and windows were walls, then what were the walls?   
“A-ha! M. Erik, that is one crime I will not confess to,” he said slyly, moving towards the wall opposite the fake window, behind the sofa upon which Leroux sat in a drunken stupor. “You will have to take up that complaint with Gaston here as there was no such wedding night written in the original French.”  
At once Erik’s birdlike eyes narrowed on Leroux’s figure, slumped back lazily in the cushions.   
“Is this true, Gaston?” Erik crowed.   
“But did you not read my BOOK, Erik?”  
Erik puffed himself up to his full height and roared,  
“Tell me you didn’t skip over my WEDDING NIGHT!”  
Teixeira ran his fingers along the yellow wallpaper, pushing, pushing until he felt the outline of the faux wall. He leaned on it with his shoulder and it sprang open. He looked back to see sparks bursting from Erik’s eyes. He fell upon Gaston, his long fingers wrapped twice around the author’s throat. The two men rolled onto the floor, empty wine glasses breaking beneath their entwined bodies.   
Bursting free from the little room and into the warm night, Teixeira would never look back again. After Balaoo, he would never again translate for Gaston Leroux. He would never again set foot in Paris. No one need ever know that any of this had ever happened. He heard early morning church bells. If he ran fast enough, he might just make it in time for Mass. If Erik succeeded in killing Gaston with his bare hands, he was sure he could read about it in the papers.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to dying-suffering-french-stalkers for passing along this biography of Teixeira de Mattos: https://archive.org/details/texchapterinlife00mckeuoft/page/106/mode/2up  
> I read half of it so no one else has to. 
> 
> Thanks to catcorsair for earlier discussions of the joy and misery of Teixeira's translation of Phantom of the Opera.
> 
> I tried to include as many real details as possible in this story. Things that are not true:  
> I saw no evidence that Teixeira and Leroux ever met in person.  
> I have no real reason to believe Leroux had any opinion whatsoever about Teixeira's translation of his novel.  
> I have no evidence that Leroux or Teixeira ever went to the Moulin Rouge.


End file.
